April 2010
Linda Newbery’s Lob [ISBN 978-0-383-61081-0 Hbk £10.99/E13.55, David Flicking Books] is as beautiful a story as it is an object. Lucy is initiated into the wonders of growing things by her beloved grandfather Will. He tells her of his garden helper Lob who lives in greenery and comes to do ‘Lob- work’ – cleaning pots, filling the watering can, keeping slugs away, tamping down planting beds. Lob is a North of England creature who appears in Milton and Shakespeare and reminds me of Seamus Heaney’s ‘Tollund Man’ who up sticks and traverses London, trailing rushes and roots behind him in a poem in District and Circle.
Lucy’s grandfather explains that when Lob finds the right person he stays with them a long time but only special people are able to see him at all. When Grandpa Will dies Lucy faces a whole series of attendant losses as his cottage is sold to developers, his garden ripped up, her grandmother moves to another house and Lob must take to the roads again in search of another kind spirit to help. Lucy longs for him and calls him and thus begins an odyssey which includes, in a wonderful sequence, Lob hitching a lift to London on a van carrying a garden to the Chelsea Flower Show. Lob deals with big themes, particularly loss and death but suggests spirit, art and hope as counter balances to these. For anyone who was taught the magic of gardens, who knows what it is to ‘dizzy’ at the smell and spells of them, this is a gift of a book. Pam Smy’s beautiful illustrations are like Lob’s seeds that spread flowers in spare places and the text is interrupted by prose poems in larger font – all of which makes this a good transitional book for anyone ready for bigger themes and more challenging material.
‘The Badness of Ballydog’ by Garrett Carr [ISBN 978-1-81728-529-1 Pbk £6.99/ E8.65 Simon and Schuster] belongs to the later category but is one of those books that makes me wish there were no categories at all. This is simply one of the best books I’ve read in ages. Carr is a brilliant story teller. He grew up in Killybegs and anyone who has driven through the Donegal town will recognise something of it in his opening description of a port dominated by a fish factory with a smell so bad that, ‘Any seagull that accidentally flew into the fume cloud would fall out of the sky dead’! Ballydog also has a bad pub, a bad fleet, a bad hotel, a bad estate – where Ewan and his mother have been sent to live in a witness protection scheme - and a truly awful teacher, Mr Heifernon. Out of the depths of the Atlantic an awful sea monster is heading towards the town in an act of primal retribution for its failings. Intuiting danger the animals are the first to leave and May, a little girl who lives on a trawler in the town’s harbour and is gifted with the ability to hear the thoughts of creatures, also knows of the impending danger. Her torturer Andrew, leader of the local gang, channels grotesque images of the monster from his nightmares into automatic drawings. In classic style the trio of outcasts, Ewan, May and Raymond must work out how to save the town and in so doing save themselves. The action of the book mounts inexorably to a thrilling ending. It is vivid, cinematic, gripping and best of all it is the first of a trilogy so that there is more where this came from. Enjoy!